Echo
by E. Gray
Summary: A vignette. Because the truth was that everything, if you looked at it a certain way, was all his fault.


"**ECHO"  
**A Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle Vignette  
by E. Gray

**__________________________________________________________________________________**

It was so hard to look at her. That's why he didn't.

Or tried not to, anyway.

Because somehow, it was still her. Still Sakura.

Just…not _his_ Sakura.

He'd watched all this time. He'd watched this Sakura grow up, framed inside the eye he'd given the clone—every birthday, every walk in the garden, every clandestine midnight meeting under the stars in the hot night wind.

And he still _remembered_ everything, even if she couldn't, and never would.

He supposed it was almost merciful, the price the witch had demanded when she'd locked away the girl's memories of Syaoran. If she'd been able to remember all the things _he_ could about their time together, how would she look at him then? It was bad enough the way she glanced at him sidelong with that look, as though _he_ was the impostor, the substitute; wanting him to be _her_ Syaoran.

Wanting him to be the boy that she knew. Or thought she'd known.

The horrible truth was there was nothing to know. Not about that Syaoran. Not anymore. It was the same as a tree falling in the forest when no one is around to hear the crash. Whatever false heart he'd obtained in the time between his creation and their meeting in Tokyo Country, it had been forgotten. If that Syaoran couldn't recall, and Sakura didn't remember anything prior to meeting him upon the return of her first feather—that time might as well have never existed.

And if nobody remembered something…did that mean it didn't happen?

If only he hadn't decided to watch. Then maybe he wouldn't care so much about how she looked at him like an ugly spider that she somehow felt sorry for, but all the same was afraid of it, and wished someone could crush it for her. He wasn't used to it. Not at all.

And despite himself, he hated it.

Following in the path of devastation the other Syaoran was now leaving in his bloodstained wake had only exacerbated the situation. None of it could be blamed on him, not directly—and Kurogane had reminded him as much—but if he hadn't made the choice, that choice that had caused all of this, of course the other Syaoran wouldn't have ever existed to be on his soulless rampage now, preprogrammed to care for nothing but finding the feathers. Without the human conscience that had fueled his reckless devotion and bland smile, all that was left of that Syaoran was a familiar shell and a mechanical determination.

Just a doppelganger of himself, a faded replication like an echo. Even the name was a diminished imitation. Just an alias to give to the witch; his father's name that he'd inherited along with his sword.

And feeling responsible for it was only natural.

But still, that echo was the one she wanted to see. Every time she gave him that pitiful, sidelong glance, he could see how much she wished that he was someone else. To her, he was that tree falling in that forest no one gave a damn about.

Regardless, he still wanted to protect her. He still loved her. No matter which Sakura she was…even that sad looking shell of a girl, sitting behind them on the chess field with her leg braced, forever on the verge of tears.

It was just so hard to look at her.

A tiny voice emitted from the little warm body nestled in his lap; Mokona turning his face up to look over the mountain of Syaoran's hunched shoulder. "Kurogane…"

The ninja was extending a glass to him, half filled or half empty…it could have been either.

"You drink alcohol, kid?"

He took the glass, frowning; though Mokona looked pleased at the idea. "I…if the other me could…"

Typically, Kurogane didn't particularly seem to like that answer. "I'm asking if _you_ can."

'Syaoran' blinked miserably. He didn't know. He barely knew anything about himself anymore, if he ever had. Eight years watching a parody of his own life unfold before his eyes, but not able to taste or smell…or touch…

"No idea."

Mokona had probably said it best. That it must have been lonely. He figured it must have been. He'd just grown so accustomed to it so many years ago, that it had eventually ceased to register as loneliness, only a strange voyeuristic version of solitude.

All in all, when he thought about it, it had been more like torture. But it was probably too much to expect a word like _torture_ to even be in the little thing's _voluntary_ vocabulary, intuitive and empathetic as he was.

But if it was torture then, subjected only to watch the tragedy unfurl, _knowing_ what would happen…or being here now among them but still feeling like he was just looking in; he couldn't quite decide what was worse.

He took a swallow of the proffered drink and winced. He couldn't remember. Had he even drunk before? His own life seemed so long ago and so far away. Like a dream that begins to immediately vaporize upon waking. Like the dead trying to remember a long past life.

How old was he? He'd been imprisoned for eight years. He'd spent eight years with 'Sakura' in Clow Country before that. And he'd been seven years old when he'd arrived there.

Twenty-three? Somehow, he felt so much older. Eighty; ninety, maybe. So old and tired and forgetful. He took another swallow. Winced. On the sofa, battling over control of the sake, Kurogane shot him a smirk as he wrested the bottle from Mokona.

"I don't want your _backwash_, shiro-manjuu," he spat at the protesting white puff, who held an empty tumbler almost the size of his entire body. The ninja turned his attention to the boy. "It must be difficult," he said.

"Drinking?"

Kurogane gestured with his glass, raising his eyebrows. "That too."

Even without elaboration, it wasn't difficult to gather his meaning. And he didn't know the half of it.

"You still know her, don't you?"

He meant Sakura. Sakura who was currently being taken to bed by the magician…rather, being tucked in. The first description gave him an unpleasant twist of displeasure he didn't feel like thinking about. He took another swallow of the stuff that tasted and felt like poison, because drinking poison felt better than thinking about how _that_ sounded in his brain.

The mage really did pay a little too much attention to her. Especially since he'd arrived. Not that it was any of his business, he supposed.

"Yes," he said to the glass.

"Must be a bitch to be in love with a princess," the ninja remarked, tilting the last of his sake into his mouth before pouring more; leaning back far into the sofa.

"Oh-ho, because you wouldn't know anything about that, would you, Kuro-rin?" Mokona chirped cheekily, bringing a little paw to his mouth before Kurogane snatched him up by the ears with a growling threat to cut him out of the next round.

"_Just a second!"_ a voice giggled in his memory, a voice from a thousand years before, laying beside him in a heap of damp crabgrass, the back of her head resting on the soft underbelly of his forearm. She was still laughing, he could see her profile against the sunset when he turned his head, and he'd wanted to kiss her.

It might have been the first time it had ever really occurred to him—at least the first time it had materialized into an actual, coherent thought. He'd wanted to kiss her, wanted to catch that bell-like giggle in his mouth, hear it cut short, taste the sweet lipgloss gleaming wet on her rosepetal lips. He'd wanted it, so intensely in that one moment with her head on his arm; so close he could smell the sugary pink shine on her laughing mouth, he was sure he'd blushed just from the shame of it.

Because he'd wanted to kiss her, but he couldn't. So often, he wasn't even allowed to touch her. After all, that was what had started this whole mess. It wasn't the fact that she was a princess that stopped him.

It was that black seal. She couldn't see it. No one except him, and her mother. It swelled in size daily, and what once he'd been able to ignore now was constantly in his vision; a swinging pendulum over her head that she wasn't even aware of.

No. He couldn't kiss her. And watching _her_ every day, looking at him like he'd betrayed her simply by being alive…it just poured salt in the wound. Twisted the knife.

Because…in a way…he had. And because, watching her through the eyes of that placid clone, he'd never felt more trapped than when he had the inexplicable urge to embrace her, to kiss her, to apologize for being such an utter failure, for being the cause of every painful thing she ever went through because of a choice _he'd_ made.

As a response, he tilted back his head and poured the remainder of the toxic-tasting drink down his throat and grimaced hard as he forced it down. Mokona gave a little gleeful cheer from the sofa cushions, and he heard Kurogane give a dry chuckle at his pinched expression.

But he didn't respond. What he couldn't tell them was that no matter how she looked at him, one way or the other, he deserved it.

He couldn't tell Kurogane that it wasn't so difficult because she was a Princess. It was difficult because everything bad that had ever happened to her was _his_ fault. And because Sakura, that Sakura, was not the one he had ruined everyone's fates in a pathetic effort to save. That the Sakura they knew was the same as the Syaoran they'd known.

Just an echo.

That everything bad that had ever happened to any of them was his fault. Maybe. Probably.

He'd have to tell them eventually. They were bound to get curious why he continued to travel at their side, despite that he had no reason that they knew of to want to help them in the least. All he had was a dubious link to the Syaoran they had known, and who was now just a heartless golem of Reed's. They _had_ asked, and likely still expected a more through explanation.

And as Kurogane, with his usual grim half-smile, tilted the bottle over his tumbler again, refilling his glass with that crystal clear cathartic poison, he decided he would. He'd tell them.

As soon as they were out of Infinity Country, and the stress of the tournament was over with, he would tell them all the truth. Even that Sakura. And if it would keep her looking at him the way she did, well, there was nothing for it, despite how it made him feel so flattened out, like a shadow. Depthless and false like a murky reflection in water. If they wanted no part of his help or companionship afterward, it was their choice to make. But he was under no obligations like the witch was, to hold details back. He simply hadn't clarified because…

Because he was the sole cause of all this misery. His own cowardice and fear. His failure. Because he was ashamed.

He would tell them the truth of it all. The reason this was happening to all of them. He downed the glass in two swallows, and Mokona did a tiny circular dance on the sofa cushion in celebration. He sung a little song about drinking together and bounced around.

Yes, he'd tell them. Just not today.


End file.
